3 Portland-area pizzerias receive national recognition, leading to big crowds — and high expectations

Some of Portland’s best pizzerias are locally owned and run. That means their food is original and fresh, but it also means they get hit much harder when things go wrong, and in some cases when things go very right.

Hapa Pizza, Grana Pizza Napoletana and Ken’s Artisan Pizza make Neapolitan-style pizzas that have been recognized nationwide and beyond this year. But their experiences and approaches to running restaurants and making pizzas are very different. The awards and accolades brought excitement and validation, but also boosts in demand and expectations. Adapting hasn’t been easy.

With the help of each other’s advice and the hope of their customers’ patience, they’re adjusting to a new normal while staying true to their visions.

Hapa Pizza

1 year since opening

Top 22 New York Times Pizza Places in the U.S. (June 26, 2024)

12 employees

200% increase in sales from June to July 2024

Hapa Pizza began under a tent at the Cedar Hills and Beaverton farmers markets in 2021, where owners Aaron and Natalie Truong made 90 pizzas every Saturday. At the market, they developed a community of fans who pushed them to strive for more.

“Over and over again, we got asked, ‘Do you guys have a brick and mortar? Is there a place we can visit during the week?’” Aaron said. Two years later, the Truongs quit their jobs and bought a little shop in Beaverton.

On the day of their grand opening, March 9, 2023, they rolled up the blinds to find a line of customers wrapped around the corner waiting for a taste of their pies.

In an instant, instead of 90 pizzas, they were making 200. Eventually, they found a rhythm and the new store became a well-known spot for their Asian American fusion pizza.

In June 2024, they got an email from The New York Times asking for photos of their pizzas for an article. “We thought it’d be like ‘25 pizzerias in Portland to try,’” Aaron said.

But soon afterward, the two woke up to congratulatory messages from friends and supporters. They subscribed to The New York Times just so they could read the piece, “22 of the Best Pizza Places in the United States.”

They were shocked. They couldn’t believe Hapa Pizza had been recognized on a national level. Overcome with joy and pride, they couldn’t wait to open their doors for the day.

Just like any other morning, they prepared the dough and vegetables and they rolled up the blinds. Outside, a crowd — triple their normal number of customers — was waiting to be let in. They called in reinforcements.

“Hey, can you come in? We’re getting swamped here,” Aaron said.

The excitement of the ranking quickly turned into panic.

“This is gonna raise people’s expectations to the moon,” Aaron remembers thinking. “It’s going to bring in a lot of foodie and food critic folks who probably have their favorite pizzerias, and they’re going to be examining our pizzas to determine whether or not this is living up to the hype.”

He worried the ranking would bring hate. And on a few occasions, it did.

Customers left bad reviews because of the lack of parking, the long wait times, and in one case paper towels on the bathroom floor. Some people left bad reviews without even trying the food. One hurled racist comments after being asked to move his car from a neighboring restaurant’s parking lot.

At the same time, the Truongs and their small staff were trying to keep up with orders that were piling up.

In the weeks that followed, they considered different options for managing their growing customer base. They went back and forth on options to decrease the demand or increase the supply. But these were difficult decisions, and neither of the owners had any business or restaurant experience. So they reached out to two pizzerias they knew would understand.

“It was just a random message and a plea for help via Instagram,” Aaron said.

The two pizzerias they reached out to? Ken’s Artisan Pizza and Grana Pizza Napoletana, the No. 5 and No. 27 best pizza places in the United States, respectively, according to 50 Top Pizza, an internationally known review site based in Italy.

The Truongs spent the rest of the night messaging back and forth with Grana, asking for advice on the adversity they were facing.

“It was nice to be able to compare notes and encourage each other and brainstorm how to deal with very similar challenges,” Aaron said.

The owners of the pizzerias debated between a reservation or waitlist system to space out orders. They talked about how to balance the mass hiring early on to manage the line, against potential layoffs in the future, if business died down. They discussed cutting lunch service or raising prices.

But the most helpful thing the Truongs got from Grana, Ken’s, their family and their fans, has been the emotional support and encouragement.

“We’ve gotten a lot of people — to the point where I’m almost in tears because they’re so encouraging — telling us to stick with it and keep doing what we’re doing,” Natalie said. Positive feedback has kept them going.

Five weeks after the Times article, Aaron and Natalie Truong are still working to catch up to the customer increase. It’s a unique obstacle, but one they’re grateful to have.

“It’s surreal to be named top in the U.S. still,” Natalie said. “I keep thinking, ‘Wow, this article lives on the internet. Anytime somebody looks up Portland pizza, this is going to pop up.’”

“It really delights us to have new people trying our pizzas for the first time and hopefully enjoying them,” Aaron said. “And we really love our regulars. They’re the lifeblood that made us who we are.”

Grana Pizza Napoletana

8 months since opening

No. 27 50 Top Pizza U.S. (June 25, 2024)

10 employees

100% increase in sales from May to June 2024

Grana Pizza Napoletana started when owners Maya Setton and Chris Flanagan had their second child. Flanagan had been a chef for 20 years. But with two young children, the best child care option was for him to stay home. During that time, Setton decided to buy him a pizza oven for his birthday, so the two could sell pizza at farmers markets on the weekends for an extra buck.

“We got to the point where we were selling almost 300 pizzas a weekend, and we had a nice following on social media, and people liked the product,” Flanagan said. “So we just went for it.”

In October 2023, Grana was born.

At the end of this past June, the couple were lying in bed when they spotted an email saying Grana had been recognized as one of the 50 Top Pizza shops in the United States.

“I think we did it,” Flanagan had said.

The review site, 50 Top Pizza, sends anonymous reviewers to pizzerias across the world every year to create rankings of the top 50 pizzas in various places — Italy, the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Asia, Pacific Islands and the world. When they’ve decided the ranking, they invite the pizzerias to New York City to accept their awards — without telling them their place.

So they flew out to accept the award. The next day, while they were flying back home, the restaurant filled with customers. They were getting texts from confused and overwhelmed staff members.

“What’s happening right now?” one text read.

In the span of a week, Grana’s revenue doubled. They onboarded and trained four new staff members. They were fully booked for days.

Usually, Grana gets around 30 to 40 reservations a day. “But I opened it the next day, and there was, like, 78 on the book,” Flanagan said.

“And mind you, we’re a 32-seat restaurant,” Setton added.

But Flanagan’s extensive experience in restaurants meant he knew how to handle a boom. A restaurant can quickly become a chaotic environment when faced with increased demand, but he said his approach served as a counterbalance.

“I’m not a yelling, loud chef type. I just get quiet and slow down a little bit. It makes you move a little bit faster,” he said. “And you try to give that energy to all of your staff. You don’t need to run around frantic. It’s just busy. If you stay calm and focused, the night goes by really smoothly.”

On the food service side, Flanagan had things handled. But on the marketing side, Setton had her hands full.

With an increase in popularity and reputation, came an increase in reviews and feedback, Setton said, just like their counterparts at Hapa were seeing.

“When people perceive you as in the top tier of whatever your niche is, all of a sudden, people have more outspoken opinions, positive or negative,” she said. For the most part, reviews were positive. People said the authenticity of Grana’s neo-Neapolitan pizza reminded them of Italy.

There were some people, perhaps unfamiliar with the characteristically soft Neapolitan dough, who said the pizza was soggy in the middle.

“I just hate the word soggy,” Flanagan said.

But comments like those are in the minority, Setton said. People have been very supportive of Grana, and their reservation system means they don’t have complaints about wait times or long lines. The two say customers’ expectations have gone up, but so have their own.

“With that award, there’s going to be another anonymous reviewer who comes in at some point,” Setton said. “So our bar for ourselves has been set much higher.”

As for their future, they’re considering their options. But their goal is to stay on the 50 Top Pizza list, and hopefully even move up in the ranks. And they want to keep making their customers happy through pizza.

“Our original goal of this spot was not a special occasion, not an anniversary,” Flanagan said. “We wanted a date night spot, a family-friendly spot, a twice-a-week pizza spot. I think that we’ve achieved all those things.”

Ken’s Artisan Pizza

18 years since opening

No. 5 50 Top Pizza U.S. (June 25, 2024)

29 employees

40% increase in sales from 2022 to 2024

Ken’s Artisan Pizza was founded in 2006 by Ken Forkish.

Just as in-person dining returned to Ken’s in 2021, Peter Kost took over ownership of the pizzeria.

Kost had extensive business experience, and had worked closely with Forkish for years. In 2021, the pizzeria opened back up for in-person dining, just in time for the world to take notice of Portland’s pizza presence.

Vincent Krone has worked at Ken’s Artisan pizza for six years. He still remembers when Ken’s received its first ranking from 50 Top Pizza in 2022, when they were No. 8 in the U.S.

“Overnight, we just had a line that went down the street, past our building, in front of people’s houses,” Krone said. “We were stretched pretty thin for the first year.”

The increase in customers was a tough adjustment. Kost said the first thing he had to do was hire more staff, but it wasn’t simple. He had to hire enough people to deal with the increased demand, but not so many that when the initial boost died down he’d have to lay them off.

“We slowly started adding, over the next couple months, a busser, a second person on the floor to do takeout alone, another dishwasher, two more cooks to the kitchen area every night, and then added an additional prep shift,” he said.

Some days they were running out of dough, and other days they had to turn away customers. That’s when Kost learned one of the most valuable lessons for dealing with an award boom.

“If we need to say no, we need to say no,” he said. “If we can’t do more on a given evening, because we were not as prepared as we are now, we’re on the learning curve. It’s OK to say no.”

Now, two years after that initial boom, Kost and Krone are racking up the 50 Top Pizza recognitions. It has become easier to manage, because they know what to expect, but the demand hasn’t slowed down. Every day, Ken’s has a line out the door before they even open.

Hiring more helped move the line along, but eventually, Krone said the staff and the orders began outgrowing the small kitchen space.

“We have a tiny space. We can only fit four pizzas over here,” he said, pointing to the counter. “We’re generally making six at a time. We can’t expand here, so it’s just been trying to figure out how to do more with less.”

Sometimes service is slow, Kost admitted. But it’s not the fault of the staff.

“If people are watching our kitchen and watching the crew work, they can see that there’s no wasted steps. There’s no wasted time,” he said. “My crew is appreciative of people, and they don’t take it lightly that people wait upwards of an hour to get seated.”

Still, some customers are impatient. After waiting in line, they want their pizza quickly, and they want it to live up to the hype. It’s a difficult balance. With such a small space, making everyone’s pizza quickly isn’t reasonable. And people’s expectations are astronomically high, Krone said.

“People see us as this pizzeria that has all this attention,” he said. “When they come here, it’s a very high expectation. People think it’s gonna do something for them, like it’s gonna fix their marriage.

“It’s just pizza.”

But Kost said expectations make the restaurant better, by holding Ken’s to a high standard. And as long as the restaurant stays true to the quality of pizza and service that earned the awards in the first place, customers’ expectations will be met, and they’ll leave with full stomachs and happy hearts.

And most importantly, he said, they’ll leave feeling taken care of. And they’ll come back.

“That’s the compliment that probably means the most is when people that have been coming here for years are like, ‘We can’t believe how many pizzas you’re putting out. We can’t believe how many people are here, and yet, every single time you impress us,’” he said.

Kost and Krone know that getting awards isn’t always easy, but gratitude always comes first. For Krone, it means nothing is falling through the cracks, and the pizza is still meeting the standards that Ken Forkish set in 2006.

For Kost, it means everything outside of the pizza is working. It means staffing and service changes were worth it, and it means customers are satisfied.

Patience, perseverance and — of course — pizza

Making pizza that satisfies customers is why the owners and chefs of Hapa, Grana and Ken’s started their restaurants. Whether they’ve been open for more than a decade or less than a year, the goal is the same.

Awards and rankings can make that goal a bit harder to reach. These restaurant owners share a similar request of customers who come in with high expectations and excited appetites.

“Be patient with us,” Aaron Truong said. “We’re trying.”

“If somebody’s order is taking a bit too long, we can apologize and try to make it right any way we can,” Kost said. “But there’s only so much you can do sometimes.”

“We’re still human beings behind the business,” Setton said. “We’re just two parents trying to make a living.”

Local businesses bring fresh food and memorable experiences to your table, but they also bring elbow grease and long nights. Owning a business can stress marriages, take away from time with family. And winning high-profile awards can add to the anxiety and even lead to the heavy burden of imposter syndrome.

When those feelings arise, Kost likes to remember Forkish’s advice to him after winning their first award. “He was just adamant and repeated it twice: ‘You deserve this. Accept that.’”

And the owners and their staff agree: A little bit of kindness goes a long way.

The part that makes the whole thing worthwhile? Seeing people’s faces when they take that first bite of a bánh mì pizza, a margherita or a mortadella and pistachio pizza, when their eyes widen and their smiles come out.

“That’s everything,” Kost said.

Clarification: The story has been updated to say Vincent Krone has been with Ken’s Artisan Pizza for six years, including working as its head chef.